Bets and Decisions
by Windflicker
Summary: Cheren and Bianca make a few bets about their best friends. Implied Touko/Touya, Cheren/Touko, and a bit of Cheren/Bianca.


**Bets and Decisions**

Ever since they were five years old, they had been absolutely perfect for each other.

Touko and Touya. Black and White. Brown eyes, and eyes as blue as the sky above. The same tousled brown hair covered their heads—one tucked underneath his hat, one pulled into a long, flowing ponytail that cascaded like a waterfall down her back. Opposites, but not quite…more like different versions of each other than anything. Different and yet very much the same.

Little did the two people in question know that since they had been five, their best friends had been betting on how long it would take them to get together.

"I think next _week_!" five-year-old Bianca announced, stomping her foot on the ground and turning her button nose up into the air. Her chin stuck out defiantly as she stared into the cloudless sky above Nuvema Town, at the puffy clouds and the flimsy, faraway feathery ones that she had learned in school were actually floating much, much higher in the sky. Bianca wasn't sure if she believed them—as far as she could see, they looked the same from the ground.

A flock of Pidove let out guttural chirps as they whirled in a mass of feathers past the lab, and without any warning, Bianca let out a loud wail of a battle cry, whipped off her green hat, and tackled Cheren to the ground.

Six-year-old Cheren cried out in alarm before he managed to calm himself, and then he cleared his throat and made a few extremely irritated grumbles, a few futile attempts to convince Bianca of the absence of _logic_ behind her actions, but the blond girl didn't even seem to hear him. So Cheren just sighed and shut his mouth and kept his arguments to himself, the way he usually ended up doing when it came to Bianca, and they tussled on the lush grass for a few more seconds before Bianca managed to leap on top of him, pressing his skinny shoulders to the ground, and jammed her hat onto his head.

She stepped back, admiring the sight of it—sharp pieces of his black hair sticking out from underneath the round hat, the little nub at the top making Cheren look like a grumpy green pumpkin with the chubby cheeks he had back then—and let out a high, piercing giggle.

"So there!"

Cheren scowled at her and ripped the silly thing off his head. His cheeks were burning red—one of the things he couldn't control with the discipline of his thoughts—and with an inward sigh and a fleeting sense of incompetence, he knew it greatly compromised how intelligent he appeared.

"Bianca…you know how unlikely that is, right?" he huffed, as he tried to salvage what little of his dignity was left. He didn't approve of this betting business, but again, it was Bianca, and any protest he made would just fall flat on her ears, as if she were deaf. Sometimes, Cheren wondered if she really was—deaf to any matters that had any seriousness to them. Of course, he would change his mind later.

"Touko and Touya have no idea what's going on here," he reminded her matter-of-factly. "They're only friends, anyway. And don't forget that we're not even _that age_ yet."

"Oh, what age?" Bianca laughed, bouncing on her toes. Forget falling flat—Cheren's words seemed to soar over her head, never even reaching her ears in the first place. "They're so _cute_, Cheren! Touko and Touya…even their _names_ sound cute together!" She clasped her hands and raised them to her chin, letting out a deep sigh. "Oh, Cheren, just let yourself dream for a moment…can't you see that it was _meant to be_?"

"No," Cheren said tersely. He shook his head and crossed his arms over his collared shirt. There was no such thing as "meant to be." What a—what was that word he had learned only a few days ago?—_deterministic_ attitude.

"Oh, _Cheren!_" Bianca squealed as her entire face lit up. She raced forward and shoved her face into Cheren's, the way she did sometimes when she was excited. She seemed to have seized an all new idea, one she could hold on to so tightly that Cheren swore she thought it was like a balloon, one that could take her into the sky. "Oh, Cheren…don't tell me _you_ like Touko, and that's why you don't like the idea of her and Touya together!"

Her green eyes were bulging, and Cheren could swear that she had just discovered enough potential romance to make her head explode—_if_ that was physically possible, and he knew very well that it wasn't.

"No, Bianca, why would you think that? Of course not." Cheren sighed and allowed himself a roll of his eyes before he plopped down on the grass. It tickled uncomfortably at his skin, but as his fingers automatically began to pluck at the individual blades, he knew he didn't want to stand up any longer.

The truth was that he _had_ had his eye on Touko for a bit of time, now, but it wasn't in the way that you would think. It wasn't as if he got Butterfree in the stomach or turned tomato-red or felt adrenaline surge through his body whenever he saw her. You see, the truth was that rather than going through all of that touchy-feely stuff, he had spent a week running through a very thorough analysis of all of their personalities in his head and matching them together—him, Touko, Bianca, Touya. And Cheren had a very good reason for doing so.

Now that they were about to go into first grade, he knew from the books he spent his afternoons reading that the kids would be starting to talk about something _other_ than the horrible, disgusting cooties that people of the other gender possessed…especially the girls, who would talk the _most_, if Bianca was any indicator. He knew that they were going to start talking about those things called _crushes_—the very word sent a hot tingle to his cheeks—and that they would immediately look at their group made up of two girls and two boys and start to match them up.

Cheren, of course, getting ahead of the game, decided that he was going to do it first. Himself. Before anyone else could spread any rumors or decide on his own romantic fate with whomever _they_ chose, he was going to choose for himself.

And so he had considered each of them in turn, and, of course, immediately eliminated Bianca. Her airheaded tendencies, her uncontrolled enthusiasm…she was far too different from him to ever be a good match. They were too incompatible, and even if he thought she was _mildly_ tolerable from time to time, and _marginally_ enjoyable to be around, it simply wouldn't do for a—and here he blushed again, hating his body for making him do so—_crush_ kind of thing.

If any girl still had cooties, Cheren thought firmly, it was Bianca.

Next, strangely enough…he thought of Touya. Not in _that_ sort of way, necessarily, since he knew from all the things that the adults told him, directly and for the most part indirectly in the testaments that their eyes unwillingly made for them, that boys weren't supposed to like other boys. Even if he sometimes found a sort of _beauty_ in Touya's chocolate brown eyes, or secretly liked the casual way that Touya held onto the black brim of his red hat with his hand jammed in his pocket, or almost wanted to reach out and stroke his chestnut ruffles of hair from time to time…Cheren knew enough about society's conventions, even as a six-year-old, that Touya was off limits for him.

So he simply considered Touya's personality, considered his easygoing smile and the friendly mannerisms that he adopted when he talked to others, considered how he was a bit of a prankster and loved to laugh. He considered the casual, clueless light in his eyes and the jaunty tilt of his hip when he stood, and decided that, in the end, he might be good for Bianca. They were both cheerful and good-natured, if a little unintentionally annoying from time to time, and it could work. It would work. Cheren determined it to be so.

And then, last of all, he thought of Touko. Touko, with her mysteriously twinkling blue eyes, with her two smiles: one the wide, toothy grin that she showed most of the time, and one the not-quite-there, subtle upturn of her lips that happened when she was alone, when she was daydreaming, or when she thought no one was looking, but they actually were. Touko _seemed_ so bubbly and confident some of the time (enough, at least, to be best friends with Bianca), but Cheren knew better than that. He knew that it wasn't her real self—the real Touko had a stubborn, strong, independent streak, and hated to act any other way in front of her friends, hated all shades of the adjective "vulnerable." And it was this independence that reminded Cheren of himself. It was this Touko, the real Touko, that made him believe that out of the other three (Touya not included—right?), she would be the one for him.

So when the time came to choose—if it ever came—Cheren knew that he would choose Touko, naturally. And though he would have never admitted it to himself, not to mention the leaping, dancing figure of Bianca, that was why it made him uncomfortable to place bets on Touko and Touya.

Grudgingly, he had to admit that he could see what Bianca was talking about. Touko and Touya _did_ get along well. And, all right, maybe their personalities could be compatible, too. But still, he had made his decision, and Cheren didn't like it one bit that the one Bianca made differed so much from his own. She had mixed up the neatly arranged, perfectly matched couples he had prescribed in his mind, and now he felt slightly disoriented. Who could he choose, now, if this wasn't going to be based on neat, predictable logic and compatibility?

"Oh, really?" Bianca leaned even closer to him, and Cheren drew back an inch as he caught a whiff of her scent—like the cloying perfume of butter and flowers. Her eyes twinkled with emerald mirth as she studied his face. "Are you _sure_ you don't like Touko, Cheren?"

"Yes!" he snapped, tugging on his collar. "Stop asking me! I mean it—I really don't."

It wasn't a lie. Bets had been made, but no choices had been placed on the table yet. Regarding Touko and Touya, Cheren knew that nothing was settled yet, and all of them would have to wait and see what would happen. And then he could rethink his decisions, reweigh the outcomes, rewire the map in his head, and make a different choice, if it ever became necessary.

* * *

><p><em>Author's Note:<em>

Yeah, so...I don't really know what that was. XD It started out as an attempt at a ChessShipping fic and then somehow changed along the way, but I kind of liked it, so I decided to put it up. Touko and Touya didn't even appear, even though it starts out with them, but little Bianca and Cheren are just sooo cute. :)

It definitely looks like a "To be continued..." thing, but it didn't seem right to add more in as a one-shot. I can definitely see a lot of possible places and relationships for the plot to explore, so if anyone wants to read more, let me know and I'll gladly write more chapters!


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